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Don’t get me wrong; I love Astons. They’re beautiful pieces of coach-building, featuring stunning exterior styling, flawless interior refinement, and hypnotic engine notes. In other words, an absolute dream ride for a nice Sunday cruise, but that’s it. Since I’ve been at Motor Trend, every Aston Martin I’ve driven has been great at being an exotic cruiser but always fell short when compared to exotic drivers. But that’s about to change with the introduction of the all-new Aston Martin V12 Vantage.

It took a while, but they finally did it. Aston took its smallest car and stuffed its biggest mill — a 6.0-liter V-12 producing 510 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque — into the engine bay. Aston Martin is claiming a top speed of 190 mph and a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds for the V12 Vantage. The top speed sounds about right, but that 60 time should be better. I tested a V-8 Vantage manual a while back and recorded a time of 4.1 seconds 0-60 and a quarter mile of 12.5 seconds at 115 mph, and that car has only 420 horsepower. I’m guessing the 60 for the V-12-powered Vantage will be somewhere south of 4.0 seconds with the quarter mile disappearing in the low 12-second range.

Aston Martin was kind enough to invite me to a track day at Willow Springs Raceway recently – Big Willow, to be exact. At first I was excited, but the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became. My concern stemmed from knowing Astons Martins are not very good track cars, because they tend to get hot and lose their brakes quickly.

As with most, if not all, track days, no matter how much driving experience you have or think you have, the first laps you turn will either be as a passenger with an instructor, or with the instructor riding as passenger while talking you through the course. I got the latter, but after one lap, the instructor hopped out and I was set loose on Big Willow.

One of the beautiful parts of the new V12 Vantage is there are no silly buttons to push to get into gear, because you can only get a manual transmission in this beauty. Depress the sport button on the dash and a more aggressive throttle map opens up the exhaust bypass earlier in the rev range. Stability control has three positions: full on, intruding only when you’re really pushing the car hard; track mode, which leaves a little bit of nanny lurking in there, but not much; and of course, full off, which is almost unnecessary.

From the warm-up lap on it was clear that this is Aston is different from any other I’ve driven. Suspension is firm but not too stiff, and there’s incredible feedback from the wheel. You can really feel the grip you have in the front, and the Pirelli P Zero Corsas do their job well. When going hard, the front will push a bit, but that usually comes from over-driving. Overall, the V12 Vantage displayed amazing balance. A few of the cars did get a bit warm, but it was a 100-plus degree day and we were romping pretty hard.

The Vantage’s carbon ceramic brakes are fantastic, and you really need them, because this car can really scoot. After numerous hot laps (in more ways than one), the brakes never got soft, and the tires barely started to get greasy. This isn’t something I’ve been able to say about Aston Martins, well, ever…

The second you see the new Aston Martin V12 Vantage you know you have something special in front of you. Save for the One-77 supercar, as its looks are the most striking of any modern-day Aston. Kudos to Aston Martin for finally building the car we all knew it could. It’s a truly enjoyable driver’s car that will impress as much on the track as it does cruising the boulevard.

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